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Rediscovering the Heckscher Museum of Art

BY ROBERT KAHN | robert.kahn@newsday.com

4:49 PM EDT, April 22, 2008

The Expressionist-era canvas that some curators unabashedly call "the most famous painting on Long Island" returned to Huntington this month after two years at the Met, where it was cleaned and brightened, and later included as part of an exhibit on German portraiture.

Now, George Grosz's "Eclipse of the Sun" is helping the Heckscher Museum of Art celebrate its own face-lift, as centerpiece of a newly curated show, one of two installations that mark the end of a yearlong renovation of the 88-year-old space.

"The Heckscher Museum of Art Rediscovered," with selections from the permanent collection (including "Eclipse") and "To Infinity and Beyond," an impish assembly of artwork inspired by mathematics, will both open to the public on Saturday, when Heckscher honchos will show off their $1.5 million in improvements -- including new skylights and a "transcendental" indoor paint job.

"The whole museum has a more ethereal light now," says Erik H. Neil, executive director of the museum, which was founded by industrialist August Heckscher in 1920 and boasts 2,200 pieces of European and American art encompassing the 19th to 21st centuries.

Redone, inside and out

Changes are noticeable both outside the 1920 Beaux Arts museum, where the facade has been spray-washed to an oyster-toned smoothness, and inside, where the lighting upgrades lend a more spacious vibe to the five-room space. Clean, painted sheetrock has replaced the fabric and paneling that once adorned gallery walls.

Two gift shop counters and the old information desk have been removed from the entrance; a new information desk, designed by Centerport architect Frank Falino, will eventually find its way in. Less visible were upgrades to the infrastructure: plumbing, the fire-suppression system and security. Funding came from Huntington Town, New York State, the National Park Service and a capital campaign.

"The Heckscher Museum of Art Rediscovered: From Lucas Cranach to Olafur Eliasson" includes favorite pieces from the Heckscher's permanent collection beyond the main attraction -- Grosz, whose piece was acquired in 1968 for the basement price of $15,000, lived in Huntington just after World War II.

Old masterworks included are Melchior D'Hondecoeter's painting "Stripped of Borrowed Feathers" and François Girardon's sculpture "The Rape of Proserpine." Work by leading American figure-painter Thomas Eakins is on exhibit, as are 20th-century pieces by Josef Albers and Salvador Dalí. Eliasson, the Scandinavian whose bare-bones art is the focus of a continuing exhibit this spring at the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1, is represented here with "Your House," an artist book with 452 laser-cut pages.

The selections for "Rediscovered" were chosen by Heckscher curator Kenneth Wayne and collections assistant Lisa Chalif.

Math, art and hurricanes

The second exhibit marking the Heckscher restoration is "To Infinity and Beyond: Mathematics in Contemporary Art," which includes paintings and sculpture inspired by numbers, geometry and patterns -- and, in one case, Hurricane Katrina ("Katrina: Tidal Surge," by Jill Baroff, pigmented ink on Japanese gambi mounted on rag).

The title is a nod to Buzz Lightyear of the Pixar film "Toy Story." The equally animated contributors include Roz Chast (a cartoon, "Mysteries of the Universe Unveiled") and M.C. Escher (a wall calendar-ready lithograph, "Waterfall," from 1961).

"Infinity" is guest-curated by Elizabeth Meryman, a New York City art consultant, and Lynn Gamwell, director of the Binghamton University Art Museum. The pair earlier planned another analytically themed Heckscher exhibit: "Genetic Expressions: Art After DNA," in 2003.

Going forward, the Heckscher expects to present more exhibits curated in-house and in collaboration with other museums, something Neil says will help the museum function as a "creative generator." In about six months, the Heckscher will reassess options for a long-planned expansion that includes the addition of a new wing.

In October, Heckscher plans "Long Island Moderns," a showcase of local 20th-century artists, among them Edward Steich.en, Cindy Sherman and Irving Penn, the sometime-Dix Hills resident whose photography Neil is keen to add to the museum's permanent collection.

Neil says the Heckscher will continue to showcase art "from classic to contemporary," with particular attention paid to American landscape drawings and, he hopes, contemporary photography. Future shows won't be so much about the "dates" of a particular object, he says, but the ideas the museum will use to connect them.

"Wrapping an exhibit around the idea of mathematics or landscape is just one way you do that," Neil says.